


Here in the Dark

by swift_river_singing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29881209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swift_river_singing/pseuds/swift_river_singing
Summary: Naturally, if Ginny's camped out talking to bugs outside the Lovegoods' mad-looking house, it would have to be--"Hey, Luna."
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Kudos: 8





	Here in the Dark

And then there is the morning when Ginny reaches for the tin of biscuits and finds it empty, and she draws in a breath to holler at Fred for being a pig, again. And she feels it thud into her stomach like a Bludger, the sudden weight of it all, and then she’s curled on the ground, cheek pressed into the cool tile, body shaking with huge gasping sobs. Some distant part of her, watching the scene, observes that this is how a sister is supposed to grieve; finally, she is doing it right. But then she’s crying hard enough to drown out even her own thoughts, until her voice is a hollow rasp and her belly aches and her face is pins and needles where she has it pressed to the floor.

* * *

Her mother's knock is tentative. Half a year ago, that would have been cause for alarm, might even have raised suspicion of Polyjuice Potion, but Molly Weasley is muted now. Ginny is the youngest of the brood and the only girl, and she has made a school of her mother's moods. She knows when it is safe to try to wheedle out of a chore, or when a few minutes of reminiscing about her Hogwarts days will put Molly in a good enough mood to let Ginny go out and have a life, Mum, Christ.

Ginny can tell by the angle of her mother's mouth or a twitch of her eyebrow when a storm is brewing. She’s Molly's daughter, and Molly is her mother, and someone has to look after her, haven't they? Lately, Molly is back to her usual blustering bustle, having everyone and their great-aunt over for tea and fretting about the state of the garden. The others believe it, when they come to visit--Ginny can see the relief in their eyes, their faith in the stability of their home, and by extension, the world.

Ginny knows better. Ginny notices the way her mother's hand still twitches toward her wand at the slightest noise or unexpected movement. She sees the way things keep disappearing from the walls, the mantelpiece--photographs, knick-knacks, Fred's old sketches from grade school. She watches the effort her mother takes not to look at the clock, where one of the hands just keeps spinning with ghoulish cheer. Molly Weasley is still Molly Weasley, but she has faded, tea dripped on the paper and left to blur. (George doesn’t buy the charade either, she’s near certain, but he’s swimming in fire whiskey too often to comment.)

All to say that Molly’s quiet knock is no surprise, and Ginny finds she’s even been expecting her words: "You needn't go back to Hogwarts, dear. If you don't feel up to it yet. I've talked to your father, and he agrees, we'd love to have you stay on a bit longer at the Burrow." Mrs. Weasley attempts a smile; it looks more like a grimace, but Ginny tries to respond in kind.

"It's all right, Mum. It'll be good for me to be back at school. Can't very well sit around here all day, can I?"

"Dear, you don't think it will be too..." She trails off, anxiety bright in her eyes.

"I'm fine, Mum," Ginny replies, exasperation fraying the edges of her words more than she intends. Her mother draws back, a twist of hurt in the wobble of her chin.

"Well, all right then, dear." Molly hesitates, and Ginny wants to scream at her -- _Can't you see what you're doing to yourself? He's gone; you can't bring him back with corn beef sandwiches and cleaning spell_ s--but instead she kicks her heels against the side of the bed, fixing her gaze on the floor. She feels like she's about four years old, all self-absorption and raging need that she can't even understand, let alone vocalize. She hears her mother exhale, loud and slow, and Ginny feels like crying. Words like I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm like this, it's not your fault, catch in her throat and pile up behind her teeth, but when she looks up something in her mother's face has closed.

"We'll go to Diagon Alley on Saturday, then. And Ginevra," (eyebrows moving dangerously, a disapproving sniff) "Maybe instead of 'sitting around,' you might do something about your room." Exit Molly Weasley.

Fuck.

Merlin, she needs some air. Ginny leans down off the bed and reaches for her trainers. One is buried in a heap of dirty t-shirts; annoyance and guilt curdle in her gut and with a half-hearted flick of her wand she sends the pile of clothes flying into a heretofore neglected hamper. Her shoe remains on the floor, battered laces looking vaguely reproachful. _What are you looking at?_ she thinks, glaring at it. She yanks the offending trainers on more roughly than is strictly necessary. She's not proud of it, but she slams the door on the way out.

Outside, though, is bright like a promise, and as she stretches her calves and starts to jog the awakening in her body feels like fucking poetry. This: the beat, beat, beat of her feet, muddy white rubber tramping down green and brown; the honey-sweet air, laced with the first crisp snap of fall; the birds and bugs and Merlin-knows-what-else narrating their feeding and fighting and fucking with chirps, squeaks, hums. Ginny lets herself sink into the great buzzing motion of it, until her mind

quiets

down.

Her breath is scratching a dry staccato in her throat and she is soaked in sweat when Ginny finally slows to a stop. She ran farther than she meant to, she realizes, because perched on the hill ahead is a slender house with a winding turret, off kilter, that looks like it's about to take a great flapping leap off the meadow and into the sky. Luna Lovegood's new house.

Ginny bends over, muscles curving into a delicious stretch, when THUMP! Something small and hard collides with the side of her ribs, and Ginny yelps in surprise and pain. She looks down, and there is the glint of grass-speckled sunlight off of a blue and gold body, antennae waving as it buzzes merrily by her feet. She crouches down (seventeen years with her brothers have burned any fear of bugs out of her) and squints at the creature. "And what the hell are you supposed to be?"

"That's a Greater Articulated Ambulating Alphadoge," says a dreamy voice just behind her left ear.

Ginny, startled. is half on her feet and reaching for her wand in the split second before the voice registers. Right. Naturally, if she's camped out talking to bugs outside the Lovegoods' mad-looking house, it would have to be--

"Hey, Luna." She turns to face the other girl, sliding her wand back down into her pocket and masking the gesture by scratching at her hip. War reflexes. If Luna noticed, though, she doesn't remark on it; she's gazing at the creature, which at the sight of her has begun spinning madly in tight little circles, antena waving still more enthusiastically.

"They're quite rare," Luna remarks. "Daddy got her in Egypt, from a fellow he met at a cryptozoology conference."

"Cryptozoology? What,” (she restrains a snort), “hunting Bigfoot and the like?"

"No, those are quite real, whatever Newt Scamander thought. A team of researchers at Cambridge just met their fifth Sasquatch,” Luna says serenely. “Cryptozoologists study the creatures that really may not exist--even Daddy can't be certain." Luna bends down and holds out a hand to the articulated-whatever-it-was-called, and with a little wriggle and a buzz it hops onto her finger and then skitters up to disappear in the folds of her billowy sleeves.

"Titchy little thing, for a name that long," Ginny says, smiling.

"Names tend not to have much to do with whomever they're meant to describe. Especially not the names other people call them."

Ginny wonders for a moment if the remark was pointed, but Luna's face still wears the same distant smile. Ginny looks away. She scratches the back of her neck, scuffs the earth with the toe of her trainer. She feels awkward, suddenly--she likes Luna well enough, nutty as she is, but Ginny's not sure she's ever been alone with her. Not enough to require a proper conversation, at least.

"So, Lovegood, how've the summer hols been?" she tries.

"Rather horrible," says Luna. "It's strange being home with everything looking quite similar, and the plants and the creatures all whirring along, and all the while I feel as if there's some dark film over everything. I dream about that dungeon every night, and poor--" She goes quiet, eyes bright.

There's a tightness in Ginny's chest. "Yeah! Yeah. It's like-- I feel like all this shit's changed, and then there's my mother still making pasties and my dad working long hours and both of them telling me to do my laundry. And I feel like I must be going mad, because sometimes I do it too, right? The pretending. But then--" Ginny grasps around for the words (odd to be actually talking about this, odd to be spilling her guts to Luna Lovegood, of all people)

"But then it never quite works, does it?" Luna supplies. "And you can't tell if you're broken, or them, or the world."

"Yeah. Yeah." Ginny looks away, aware of the telltale warmth collecting in the corners of her eyes. She scrubs a hand hastily across her face; Luna cocks her head like some sort of inquisitive bird, and then-- "Would you like to see something interesting?"

* * *

The inside of the Lovegoods' house is everything and nothing like Ginny imagined.

"We'll go through the back door," Luna tells her. "Daddy thinks the fungal colony on the front mat may be on the verge of sentience, so best not to disturb it." She holds open the wooden door, adorned with a splatter of cheerfully clashing orange and green paint. Ginny nearly trips over a heap of boxes piled in front of the entryway, and she hears a hissing noise.

"Careful, that bites," Luna tells her, stepping lightly over the pile. Ginny stares.

Growing up a Weasley is a sort of dizzying alchemy whose formula Ginny has yet to fully puzzle apart. It had something to do with grass-stained trousers and scraping the last bit of jam from jars, squabbling over breakfast cereal and staging performances of Celestina Warbeck songs for Mum and Dad (before Bill and Charlie were far too mature to wear sequins or do a kickline.) It was bruises from Quidditch brawls and constant shouting and Fred and George putting your favorite Harpies jersey in the rubbish heap, under the potato peelings.

Ginny knew as early as six years old that she loved her family fiercely and violently and unquestioningly, even stupid tosser Percy. She also knew that four days out of seven she wanted to punch her way out of her own skin, just to breathe a little, get out of the suffocating freckled heat of Being a Weasley, of the Burrow she carried with her in the knocking of her elbows, the timbre of her voice. (I just want something that's MINE, she had once written, 11 years old and ragged-raw with the need for someone to really listen to her.)

In moments of introspection--more and more common these days, which Ginny supposes must herald the dreaded "growing up" her mum always talked about--Ginny has wondered if it’s some sort of Weasley Thing that’s made her so fascinated with with other people's houses. The way the particular architecture, the assemblage of stove or couch or lamp or painting, seems to twine its way around people's lives. She's not sure if the houses make the people or the people the houses, or perhaps both. Either way, seeing someone's house feels like a kind of surgery. Slicing open their skin and watching the winding pathways of their insides spill out, slippery with secrets and silences and dish soap, until she's dizzy with the intimacy of it.

Which is all to say that Ginny has, of course, wondered what the Lovegood's house was like, imagined radishes hanging from the ceiling or Nargle-repellant by the stairs. Somehow, though, she had never quite imagined the scale of it. Ginny is used to mess. She's a Weasley, after all, and the Burrow's resting state looks more or less like a pack of roaming nifflers was set loose in it. The Lovegoods' house, though, looks like someone sat those nifflers down, had them snort a few lines of coke, and then set them loose--with maybe a blast-ended screwt tagging along too, for good measure.

Heaps of parchment and dusty tomes with leather covers so cracked that they look like they were unearthed from a medieval gravesite careen toward the ceiling in terrifyingly uneven stacks. The floor is a minefield: shipping crates, dark viney plants that have escaped their pots to wind around the legs of spindly armchairs and a misshapen sofa, strange silvery contraptions that announce their presence with periodic trumpet blares, and somehow, inexplicably, a complete scaled replica of what looks to be the Muggle Palace of Westminster. One wall is the shocking pink of stomach medicine; another sports an inky blue-grey smudge that suggests a recent explosion.

It's completely, entirely mad, and yet there's something almost artful about the place. Or--Ginny searches for the word to catalogue it--it feels electric. She feels the manic cluttered chaos of the room like a charge swirling down her spine, wrapping round her ribs. You could make things here. You'd have to make things, or you might just explode.

"You're reading," says Luna, looking at her curiously. "What does it say?" Ginny realizes she's been standing stock-still in the middle of the Lovegood's living room. She flushes.

"Got a bit blinded by the paint on that wall, I reckon. Is that where you bring people to hypnotize them?" She wiggles her fingers and Luna laughs.

“No, that room’s upstairs,” she replies. Ginny thinks (hopes) she’s joking, and she’s laughing too as she follows Luna up the winding stairs to her bedroom.

It’s fairly weird to look up and see your own face painted larger-than-life on the cracked plaster of someone else’s ceiling, and Ginny can feel her inner Cool Girl screaming at the awkwardness of the scene. But as carefully as Ginny developed that Cool Girl, it’s felt remarkably useless for the past year or more, so Ginny tells it to shut up and busies herself with inspecting Luna’s bookshelves. All things considered, a mural ranks pretty low on the list of weird shit Ginny’s seen, anyway.

Luna, meanwhile, is sitting cross-legged on the bed, spine ramrod-straight. She tucks one hand underneath her legs, cradles her ankle with the other, and her eyes follow Ginny with a wariness that looks foreign on her face. Ginny has the sudden impression that she is the first person Luna has invited up here willingly, and for a moment her bones feel too big for her body. She blinks, and the sensation is gone.

“Merpeople of the Mediterranean,” Ginny reads at random. “Interesting, Lovegood.”

“I think so,” says Luna, quietly, and maybe it’s something about the softness in her voice that compels Ginny to take a great bouncing leap onto the bed, sending two batiked pillows and a battered-looking stuffed frog flying. Luna laughs, startled, and from her sleeve emerges the little Abulating-whatsit to wave her irritated antennae at whatever interloper has dared to jostle her from her cozy nap.

“Hey,” says Ginny, crossing her legs to mirror Luna. “Thanks for showing me this.”

Luna beams at her. “I haven’t, actually.” Ginny’s confusion must register, because Luna elaborates. “Not yet, anyway. When was the last time you ate liverwurst?”

“Um. When I was a kid? Tasted vile.”

“Very good. And have you ever found a four-leaf clover?”

“N-no? I don’t think so?”

Luna’s started twirling her wand in a funny twisting pattern as she speaks, and Ginny shivers. “Drafty in here, isn’t it.” Luna doesn’t respond; her eyes are fixed on some invisible spot on the voerlet between them, until with a last swirl and flick of her wand, there is a little pop! And then the room is completely silent. It feels like being underwater, thick in Ginny’s eardrums.

“Here”, says Luna. She takes Ginny’s hand, places it on her stomach; instinctively Ginny draws her navel in.

“No,” says Luna, “just relax, that’s just to catch your breath.” And she takes Ginny’s other hand in hers, laces their fingers together, Luna’s cold and Ginny’s sweaty, probably clammy. Luna closes her eyes and raises her wand.

When the dark comes it is sudden and absolute. Ginny finds herself blinking against it and fights down the panic at the black, black, black pressing in like obliteration and her breath coming in too fast until she feels Luna give her hand a gentle squeeze and then she remembers, too, the hand on her stomach, concentrates on the rise and fall.

“How do you feel?” Luna asks softly.

“I dunno?” says Ginny, shifting uncomfortably but holding to the breath, in, out. She hears the bed frame creak and then Luna’s other fist nudges against hers. Ginny opens her hand, palm up, and feels the tickle of a handful of -- something -- drop into it. Like grains of rice, but crackly. Seed pods? She narrows her eyes, straining to catch some glimpse in the thick black, and as if she’s willed it into being there’s a little glow, like coming into focus, and then another, spots of light in her palm gently quivering like lightning bugs. In the dim light she can see Luna grin; her palm is glowing too and there’s a faint rustling noise all around them.

“I found the first one in the field, after the funeral,” Luna says, nearly a whisper. “And then I kept looking, and once I had the first it was almost like they were calling to each other. Like they couldn’t even stand it, any more, to be alone.”

For reasons Ginny doesn’t want to think about, her words land like a punch to the gut. Luna cocks her head at a funny angle and Ginny feels something wrench behind her ribs and without thinking she presses forward so that her knees are touching Luna’s.

“I'm just, “she says, and the pressure in her chest is unbearable. “I’m so fucking tired. Of being sad.” Her voice cracks toward the middle and then she’s crying and Luna is cupping her head against her chest, and she’s spilled the little seed pods on the coverlet and Ginny feels like she could split open with the force of it, gushing rending seeping poison, everything good she’s ever been given turned to rot and bile, keening, and through the tears and snot she can see Luna bend her neck down like some awkward stork and she presses her forehead to Ginny’s, cool, so cool.

"What you have to understand, Ginny," she says, haltingly, "What they keep trying to make us forget. You have always, always been enough." Her voice is thick; Ginny feels her swallow but she keeps going, hands tracing nonsense patterns across Ginny's shoulders. "We were always enough, already; we will always be enough."

She holds her there, and Ginny cries until her face is tight and aching and slowly she quiets. Around her she realizes the faint humming is rising.

Ginny lifts her head and as she does so her salt-sticky skin clings for an instant to Luna's. From the bedspread the lights are sparkling again, and now they’ve started to move in gentle sweeping whooshing movements, and behind them as they go they leave trails that linger like shimmering threads . Up and up, over and through they move, humming still, until they’ve made a glowing growing web, a kind of nest around them.

“What are they?" Ginny murmurs.

"I don't know," says Luna, and she smiles beatifically. "Isn't it wonderful? I think there's something geometric in their movement though, if you watch--" and she reaches between the voluminous layers of her tunic to pull out a small silver notebook that in the green light looks like an alien artefact. "Like, here, look at this, see how it's moving--" and she traces a strange spiraling shape down the page, otherwise dotted with what look to be arithmantic equations. "But I’m not nearly advanced enough in Arithmancy to map it out, and I don’t know a thing about flight patterns. I suppose I could talk to Madame Hooch. Professor Sprout, too, of course..."

"I can help," Ginny says before she can think. "I bet Flitwick would be keen to take a look, too. Are there more of these that people've found?" As they speak the lights twinkle, and then with a sound like a sudden clap of air they go out and the strange heavy dark lifts too, and then it’s just Ginny and Luna on the patchwork quilt, afternoon sun drifting misty through the gauzy curtains. When Ginny opens her palm, she sees that the seedpods she’s clutching look ordinary enough--grey-ish brown, shrivelled, the largest no thicker than her pinkie finger. She looks up and realizes that Luna is staring at her, an odd expression on her face.

“What,” she says, and all at once she is painfully aware that their knees are still touching. She can feel herself blush and nearly pulls back, before reminding herself to breath, in, out.

“I’m quite glad to know you, I think,” says Luna, then frowns. “If you would just--that’s not a very good hiding place for you,” and she wriggles her shoulders, sending the articulating-whatsit scuttling out of her hood. Indignant-looking as always, the little creature leaps onto Luna’s ear, does a clicky little spin, and glares down at Ginny, who bursts into helpless laughter; Luna joins her.

“You’re, like, really incredible,” Ginny says, when she’s calmed down, and Luna looks bemused but she smiles all the same. Maybe it’s the season, or the trauma and rehashing thereof, or perhaps it’s just something soft and stupid like the light in Luna’s hair, but in a burst of reckless Gryffindor courage Ginny leans forward and press her lips to the place where Luna’s smile starts.

Though she knows her heart must be pounding, all she can hear, for a moment, is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this four or five years ago & always thought I'd go back to rework it but clearly that is never happening! Posting now in hopes that someone enjoys it.


End file.
